The Southern Poverty Law Center is alleging 96 Alabama school districts are violating a federal law which prohibits denying a child's access to public education based on immigration status.

The Montgomery-based SPLC sent a letter to Alabama School Superintendent Tommy Bice today asking him to ensure all of Alabama's 135 school systems comply with federal mandates on the issue by the opening of the 2014-15 school year.

Bice said he has received the letter

"I received the official letter from SPLC this morning and it is currently under review, along with the attached documentation," Bice said. "We will have a response and suggested resolutions to confirmed violations by the requested date noted in the letter."

The SPLC's concern focuses on schools it says are denying or discouraging access to public education. The group cites school enrollment forms that "require a Social Security number or a U.S. birth certificate, without explaining that such disclosure, under federal law, is voluntary and not necessary for enrollment."

The SPLC said it has notified the 96 school districts about the problems it has identified. The group searched the websites of school systems and individual schools across the state over the past month for enrollment requirements and enrollment forms. The group said it has also sent out notices to 39 school systems where enrollment information was not readily available. Those letters ask the systems to show they are complying with the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1982 case Plyler vs. Doe that a state cannot deny funding or access to public schools for children whose parents do not have lawful immigration status.

The SPLC said Bice - at the group's urging --sent a letter to Alabama's superintendents last summer, telling them that a lack of a Social Security card, a birth certificate or a parent's driver's license is not a basis to deny enrollment. But, the group contends, "more than 70 percent of Alabama's schools districts have failed to comply."

SPLC Attorney Jay Singh said the Justice Department and the Department of Education on May 8 sent out detailed guidelines on what information schools can ask for and what is not required for enrollment. Singh said that letter follows a similar, if less detailed, memo on the subject the two agencies sent out in 2011.

"Unfortunately despite all these guidance letters and memos from the superintendent a lot of these schools are continuing to embrace these unlawful enrollment policies," Singh said. "This is a way of helping schools deal with it before upcoming enrollment."

The SPLC was part of the legal team that represented a large group of plaintiffs who sued to block Alabama's HB 56. The far-reaching measure passed in 2011 by the state's new Republican-led legislature criminalized most contact with illegal immigrants from discussing employment to housing to providing transport. Supporters, including Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, called it the strongest illegal immigration law in the country. The law also required immigration status information to be provided by new students enrolling in public schools.

The U.S. Justice Department filed a separate lawsuit to block the law. The school measure and much of the rest of the law was blocked by the federal courts. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 against Arizona's far-reaching immigration law, which was similar, but didn't go as far as HB 56. The court found that immigration law enforcement was primarily the job of the federal government.

"I think we're still working our way out of the shadows of HB 56, and this effort is really an extension of the litigation we pursued in HB 56," Singh said. "We're trying to ensure these immigration communities have access to schools and can make good on the opportunities we have here.

"In the schools context it's still quite bad out there, we're hoping this is going to change that."